44 m. ago ZIIP Dot review: Can this gadget heal my hormonal acne breakouts?

The doughnut-shaped device was created to treat and calm blemishes

Politics

44 m. ago Havoc review – Tom Hardy’s gonzo gun mayhem misses the point

Disillusioned cop Hardy must rescue a corrupt politician’s son from triads and police but potential for drama goes down in a hail of bulletsThe title is appropriate. Welsh director Gareth Evans is the action maestro who rocked our world with his superb skull-rattling thrillers The Raid and The Raid 2; this new one for Netflix certainly has its fair share of OTT gonzo mayhem. Shootouts in cramped interiors and in the open air sometimes seem to go on so long that the gunfire feels like an extended drumroll. Dozens of people get riddled with bullets from automatic weaponry; they all go into that shoulder-rolling, arm-waving, blood-spurting choreography. At one stage, a comatose and heavily bandaged person in a hospital bed gets the same machine gun treatment, and even this poor guy has to jitterbug, infinitesimally and horizontally, in his hospital pyjamas as he gets filled full of lead.But frankly the action and the violence is too chaotic and almost meaningless and the CGI-Gotham-typ...

Politics

3 h. ago Furious West Lothian home owner ordered to tear down fence protecting her home

Dawn Gardner accused West Lothian Council’s Development Management Committee of “bullying” behaviour, and of ignoring a decision by Scottish ministers, which agreed the land belonged to her.

Politics

3 h. ago The Accountant 2 teeters on the edge of making autism a punchline

While the 2016 original seemed to respect the neurodivergence of Ben Affleck’s savant superhero, this belated follow-up goes for easy jokes

Politics

4 h. ago Circa/LPO/Gardner review – Exhilarating, exquisite and extraordinary as Ravel melds with acrobatics

Royal Festival Hall, LondonMultitudes festival opened with a stunningly effective collaboration between the Australian circus company and the London Philharmonic OrchestraThe Southbank Centre’s cross-genre Multitudes festival opened with a double bill of Ravel’s ballets Daphnis et Chloé and La Valse, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner, and performed by the Australian company Circa with choreography by their artistic director Yaron Lifschitz. Circa’s style amalgamates circus and acrobatics with contemporary dance, and the combination of athletic beauty, agility and strength suits Ravel uncommonly well.Rather than use the music as accompaniment to display, Lifschitz worked with the score rather than against it, though he dispensed with Daphnis et Chloé’s narrative, replacing it with a sequence of contrasting abstract tableaux, now exhilarating,now erotic, always rooted in the pulse and throb of the music, played with exquisite finesse and detail by the LP...

Politics

4 h. ago All Fours by Miranda July audiobook review – the frank, sexy novel everyone’s been talking about

The author’s hypnotic reading evokes the desires and existential crisis of a 45-year-old woman on a wild road trip In the second novel by writer, actor and film-maker Miranda July, a nameless Los Angeles-based artist who has had success “in several mediums” leaves behind her husband, Harris, and their young child, Sam, to drive across America. She is due at a meeting in New York and has decided to get there via a leisurely road trip. But what starts off as a fleeting break from the mundanity of marriage and motherhood turns into a wild and wonderfully odd unravelling. Just half an hour into her journey, she impulsively leaves the freeway and checks into a scruffy motel. There she is electrified by a younger car hire worker who has “a Huckleberry Finn/Gilbert Blythe look that I used to flip out over as a teenager.” After the two lock eyes while he squeegees her windscreen (not a euphemism), she decides to pursue him in an unusually chaste love affair.All Fours – which has been shortl...

Culture

4 h. ago Nicola Benedetti: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto album review – warm and deliciously playful throughout

Benedetti/Aurora Orchestra/Collon(Decca)Benedetti and the Aurora, who play from memory, have fun and freedom here, augmenting the role of the drum in an ebullient recordingWe tend to have an unhealthy reverence towards Beethoven, says Nicola Benedetti in the notes to her new recording of his Violin Concerto. He did, after all, write this now-venerated concerto largely on the fly, for a soloist whose party piece was playing the violin upside down.So it’s apt that Benedetti, Aurora and their conductor Nicholas Collon have recorded an interpretation that’s buoyant, warmly affectionate and at times just a little tongue-in-cheek. You’d expect playfulness in the last movement, but it’s there to some extent throughout, even in Benedetti’s weightless playing of the slow movement. There are striking moments nodding to historical authenticity – the drum, with sticks hard as nails, at the very start, and the vibrato-less strings in the introduction to the slow movement. The drum becomes unusua...

Events

5 h. ago Alice Snedden at Soho Theatre review: a wonderfully witty turn from the versatile Kiwi comic

This is Snedden’s first show in five years - not that you’d know it

Politics

5 h. ago Flintoff on Disney+ review: this documentary spares no grisly detail

The former England cricketer is an engaging and likeable presence in this exhaustively detailed retelling of his life

Politics

5 h. ago Until Dawn review – efficient, if unscary, video game horror

A solidly made adaptation of the Playstation hit sees a group of twentysomethings stuck in a gory death loopA week after the release of Ryan Coogler’s unusual, artfully crafted horror Sinners, we are now back to the industry’s genre norm with Until Dawn, a schlocky video game adaptation that has far less on its mind. Such a drastic drop in IQ and ambition means there’s no serious comparison to be made here and this weekend there’ll be no real competition at the box office (Sinners is likely to remain on top) so such contrast does ultimately allow the film to stay within its own, sillier space, a deep-fried donut for dessert after a filet mignon entree.On its own, lower-stakes terms, Until Dawn is a passable, if rather unfrightening frightener, made with some skill and enlivened by a strong troupe of young actors, enough to notch it slightly above the piss-poor standard but not quite enough to really justify its existence. The game it’s based on has been described by the director Dav...

Events

5 h. ago Gary Lineker’s critics have got it wrong. It’s reasonable to talk about more than sport | Max Rushden

The Match of the Day presenter has been challenged again on his views on Gaza and Israel. But can we really expect him to have no opinions about the outside world?The most extraordinary revelation to come from Gary Lineker’s interview with Amol Rajan on the BBC is that he’d sometimes come home from school to find Engelbert Humperdinck playing cards with his dad. Surprisingly, almost all the reaction to the conversation has ignored this bombshell – Engelbert apparently not such a big player in the culture war world; best focus on your Middle Easts, your Bravermans, your impartialities, Brian.Of course the job of news outlets is to pick out headlines but it does appear almost no one has watched the whole programme. It’s essentially a nice wide-ranging interview covering the career of one of the best English footballers and football broadcasters of all time. Continue reading...

Politics

5 h. ago US army suspends commander after Trump and Hegseth portraits flipped to face wall

Col Sheyla Baez Ramirez, Wisconsin training base’s first female commander, was suspended after the discoveryThe army has suspended a Wisconsin training base’s first female commander after discovering portraits of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth had been flipped around to face a wall.The army has posted an undated statement on Fort McCoy’s website saying Col Sheyla Baez Ramirez has been suspended as the base’s garrison commander. The statement said the suspension isn’t related to any misconduct, but provided no other details, saying the matter was under review. Continue reading...

Politics

6 h. ago Liverpool’s title chance, the FA Cup semis and walkers: Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Seb Hutchinson and Dan Bardell as Manchester City get a vital win over Aston Villa in the hunt for Champions League footballRate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.On the podcast today: two midweek Premier League games to review. One more consequential than the other as Manchester City go third with a late win over Aston Villa. In the other fixture, Crystal Palace score two brilliant goals to claim a point at Arsenal. Continue reading...

Politics

7 h. ago 'She made a mistake but is paying a very high penalty for this... she has been punished enough'

A lawyer said Lindsey Gardner was being 'unfairly crucified' for her 'genuine accident'

Politics

7 h. ago Self Esteem: A Complicated Woman review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

(Polydor)After her big breakthrough and West End fame, Rebecca Lucy Taylor works through her worries in real time on her new album – to fascinating and confusing effectLast week, London’s Duke of York’s theatre played host to an elaborate four-night live staging of Self Esteem’s third album. Devised by Self Esteem herself – Rebecca Lucy Taylor – along with Tony award-winning theatrical director and designer Tom Scutt, it was rapturously received by critics, and seemed to speak of an entirely understandable confidence on Taylor’s part.Since 2017, she has completely reinvented herself, from one half of middle-ranking indie duo Slow Club into an on-her-own-terms pop star. Her second album as Self Esteem, 2021’s Prioritise Pleasure, was a critical and commercial success, shifting her into the realm of breakfast TV interviews and appearances on The Graham Norton Show and Celebrity Bake-Off. She also has a burgeoning career as an actor, having played Sally Bowles in a West End production ...

Politics

7 h. ago Tina Knowles spills a demure amount of tea in Matriarch: A Memoir

A compelling account of the woman behind some of the most famous daughters on the planet

Politics

7 h. ago David Ellis reviews One Club Row: Imagine the Dev and the Dover hooked up

It’s as if the owners actually want you to have fun, writes David Ellis — can you imagine?

Politics

8 h. ago Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp review – wild, absurd and wickedly funny

This outrageous skewering of the modern dating landscape confronts toxic masculinity and the contradictions of female desireNearly every page in Sophie Kemp’s debut is smart, jarring and wickedly funny. Set in Brooklyn in 2019, this wild, absurdist take on the millennial novel tracks the adventures of Reality Kahn, a 23-year-old waterslide commercial actor and zine-maker who determines to become “the greatest girlfriend of all time”, after her drug-dealing sex partner, Emil, casually suggests that she gets herself a man. Prior to that point, Reality had just been living her life, no strings attached. “Would having a special guy around really make me happier? Was this the life purpose I was looking for?” A boyfriend, she decides, might “add colour to my life as well as provide intrigue”. And, New York City being “a place where nefarious individuals got ideas”, he could also protect her from “getting raped so much”.Reality’s quest kicks off with a hunt for “intel”. Where do ...

Politics

9 h. ago Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review – a brilliantly modern turn

RPG fans seeking a truly unique genre entry will find exactly what they're looking for in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a game that proves there's plenty of life in turn-based battles.

Politics

10 h. ago You season 5 on Netflix review: this ridiculous TV drama deserves its mercy killing

Goodbye, You. Netflix’s hit tale of murderous romantic Joe Goldberg ends with an embarrassing final season — and a strangely good last episode

Events